Many financial and/or lending institutions utilize multiple systems to collect customer information for commercial loan applications. In the most basic scenario, printed-paper forms, with spaces provided for the entry of typed or hand-written customer information, are used to collect any requisite information to facilitate processing of the commercial loan application and consideration for approval by a review committee, or the like.
In many cases, a customer seeking a commercial loan may have an existing relationship with the financial and/or lending institution from which the commercial loan is sought. As such, the customer/applicant may have previously provided the financial institution with information specific to the customer/applicant, such as company profile data, or the like, that may be stored by the financial institution in a database.
Currently, no adequate mechanism exists for populating data fields of electronic loan applications with previously provided and stored data. Because at least a portion of the previously provided information (e.g., company profile data) may be required as a part of the commercial loan application process, a loan officer or other representative of the financial institution may be required to repeatedly enter information, previously provided, thereby decreasing productivity and introducing additional potential for errors.
Moreover, current methods of assigning a commercial loan request for review, and of monitoring the status of the approval process, are inadequate. In many cases, paper-based forms may be communicated to a review committee located in a geographic area remote from the application site, creating delay in the approval process, and hindering attempts to monitor the status of the review. For example, if the customer contacts the loan officer to check the status of the commercial loan request, the loan officer may in turn have to contact the review committee and wait for a reply.